Thursday, July 28, 2016

STAR TREK: "THE NAKED TIME" (1966)

The action in “Man Trap” begins because two archaeologists
are investigating an alien world; the home to a nearly extinct species. In “Naked Time” the ship
seeks out a planet doomed to break apart, in part because a contingent of scientists have set up operations on the planet's surface. The scientists' purpose is to gather data regarding the world’s impending
destruction. But to study destruction is to court it as well. An Enterprise landing-party descends to the planet, garbed in protective suits to shield them from the elements, but they find all of the scientists dead, apparently as the result of their having lost their minds. Once again there's a fear that an alien contagion will spread, though this time only the Enterprise and the closed
society aboard it will be affected.

Early in the story, the ship’s officers stress their need
to be able to clear of the disintegrating planet at a moment’s notice. Engineer Scott is particularly confident that they can escape without a hitch. However, he doesn't know that one man in the landing-party, a fellow named Joe, proves himself to be "the weakest link." Even though everyone in the landing-party wears protective suits, Joe decides to pull off one of his gloves for a moment, with the result that he’s
infected by some virus native to the planet. (This would not be the last time
when a member of the Enterprise crew performed an action of supreme
recklessness, apparently for no good reason but to get the story moving.)

Within less than an hour, the organized military hierarchy
of the Enterprise breaks down, as crewpersons begin to act out their fantasies.
Interestingly, Joe acts out a
fantasy of inadequacy and pessimism that forms a polar opposite to the
Federation's can-do optimism. “We don’t
belong here,” Joe complains, at first threatening his colleagues and then
knifing himself. However, as McCoy observes, Joe perishes not from his wounds
but from having lost the will to live.

In this episode at least, indulging the impulses of the Id
has the cumulative effect of giving up on the real world. Some of the responses
to the disease—transmitted from one person to another through the medium of
sweat—are largely harmless, as when Sulu fantasizes that he’s a Muskeeteer and
threatens crewmen with a rapier. Riley, another crewman to have direct contact
with Joe, seems to be in a similar mode when he convinces himself that he’s the
captain and starts issuing ridiculous commands to his crew. However, in his
delirium he shuts down the ship’s engines—the very thing Scott needs to whisk
the Enterprise out of the clutches of the doomed planet. Thus, in a very real
sense, Riley is every bit as suicidal as Joe, but he wants to take everyone
else with him, under the delusion that they’re all going to have more fun under
his command.

Almost as damaging as male ego is feminine eros. The only
female to become infected is Christine Chapel, introduced to audiences in this
episode as a sick-bay nurse who’s desperately in love with the half-human
Spock. The disease emboldens her to profess her love to Spock, who feels
compassion for her but nothing else. However, because she touches him and
transmits the disease, Spock’s logic is rendered inert by an outpouring of
uncontrollable emotions. This leads to the highly regarded centerpiece of the
narrative.

Kirk, not yet infected, seeks out Spock, hoping to utilize
Spock’s scientific acumen to re-start the Enterprise engines and save the ship.
In the process of trying to slap some sense into the demented Vulcan, the two
men apparently exchange sweat—a scene which must be a great favorite with fans
of Kirk-Spock slash-fiction. Spock, initially maudlin over his inability to
confess his love for his mother, becomes racially hostile, telling Kirk that he
sometimes felt “ashamed” of being friends with a human. He returns Kirk’s blows
with one of his own, and almost immediately, the worst effects of the disease
pass out of Spock and into Kirk. If anything, Kirk’s confessional is more
extraordinary—and less human—than that of the half-human Spock, as the captain
reveals that he feels bonded to his ship as if it were the only real love of
his life. This psychological issue is never substantively raised again, but it
might go a long way to explaining Kirk’s later status as a player who never
finds a permanent beloved.

Only at the end does the title
take on significance. Up to this point, the “naked” part of the title clearly
signified the way all of the crewpersons were revealing their inner selves to
their colleagues. But when Kirk and his allies succeed in re-starting the
engines, they also accidentally propel themselves backwards in time. When the
ship returns to normal time, Spock comments that they now have “three days to
live over again.” Kirk wryly comments that he certainly doesn’t want to re-live
the same three days. In a symbolic sense, though, the travel in time—from a plot-;perspective, not really necessary so that the ship can escape danger—may also
represent a “triumph over time.” Time is the medium through which all mortals
gather experience, which in turn leads them to build up fantasies of
what-could-have-been or should-have-been. By escaping the orbit of the dying
planet, Kirk and his crew have also metaphorically escaped, at least for a
little while, the tyrannical dominion of
time over their lives, even if their ultimate goal remains that of service to
the “jealous god” of reality.